Witness | All stories

Last November the film director Matej Minac achieved something beyond his dreams. His film "Nicholas Winton - the Power of Good", won the greatest international honour that a documentary film can achieve: it was voted best documentary in the International Emmy Television Awards in New York. The film, a Czech-Slovak coproduction, is about a young British stockbroker, who saved nearly 700 Jewish children at the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Prague, struggling against time to find them homes in Britain. The now 93-year-old Nicholas Winton is

During the Velvet Revolution, Michal Lobkowicz found himself wanting to take part in the events that would change the course of his country's history. But while many were content with just being a part of the revolution, Michal Lobkowicz continued to pursue a career in politics, and in 1990 he was elected to the Czech parliament as a member of the Civic Democratic Party. In 1998, at the age of 34, he became defence minister in the interim government of Josef Tosovsky, and during his ministerial term he quit the Christian Democrats for the newly

For this week's Witness, the last before Christmas, we bring you the story of a dream come true. Professor Frantisek Janouch is one of Europe's foremost nuclear physicists. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he lost his job and five years later was driven into exile. In Sweden he founded the Charter 77 foundation, which played a huge role in helping dissidents back home in Czechoslovakia. Since the fall of communism the foundation has continued its work, now focusing on charity and cultural projects. Here Frantisek Janouch remembers

Colonel Petr Uruba is a former Czechoslovak pilot who fled to England in 1939 and joined the RAF. His plane was blown off course during a bombing mission over France, and he was forced to land in occupied Normandy. Captured by the Germans, he was court-martialled: as a subject of the Reich fighting for the Allies he was guilty of treason. He managed to escape the death sentence, and was sent to a series of POW camps, ending up in the infamous Colditz. Now 86, he recalls returning to London in 1945 and witnessing the scenes of jubilation on

Jiri Vydra is a painter and sculptor who loves to share his gift with others, driven by his own, very personal sense of spirituality. For years he has been working with children, and with his own childlike enthusiasm he has helped to inspire hundreds of children to express themselves through painting. Some of his most extraordinary and inspiring work has been with the mentally disabled, with children who spend most of their lives shut away in homes. Jiri Vydra's cottage in the rolling Brdy Hills is just a few kilometers from one of these homes,

Jiri Dienstbier has quite a curriculum vitae. He went from being a political prisoner and then a stoker under the communists to Czechoslovak foreign minister after the revolution. Then from 1997 to 2001 he was United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Jugoslavia. But Jiri Dienstbier's original profession was journalism, and - in the 1960s - he worked as a foreign correspondent for Czech Radio. Even that was a sign of the easing of the restrictions which ended with the Prague Spring of 1968, he says; in the 50s the Czechoslovak media

Every year, the Czech branch of UNICEF has a campaign asking people to contribute to a collection for a specific country in the third world. This year, it is focusing on Rwanda where thousands of children have been left alone to take care of themselves and their siblings. Pavla Gomba was part of a UNICEF mission to Rwanda last month, where she travelled to very remote villages to talk to people about their daily lives and experiences. The most striking meeting was with Bonne Annee. His name translates as Happy New Year because he was born on New

Tomas Vachuda was four years old when his family went to America in 1968 on what was to have been a vacation. In August Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and the family stayed. They didn't see their homeland again for over twenty years. Now Tomas is in his late thirties and is back in his hometown. He runs the Prague office of an international consultancy firm, coming and going between the United States and the Czech Republic. Here he recalls his return in 1990 and how his early childhood memories were confronted with the reality of post-Velvet

As this month's huge NATO summit in Prague draws nearer, memories of the street fighting of two years ago during the city's IMF/World Bank conference again seem very fresh. Thousands of anti-globalisation protestors converged on the Czech capital and, although most protests were peaceful, there were also several dramatic and violent clashes with the police. At that time the Scottish journalist Nick Carey was working here at Radio Prague. He was out in the streets covering the demonstrations and suddenly found himself in a frightening situation,

Leos Rejmont is a doctor serving in the Czech Army. When the Czech Republic decided to send a field hospital to Afghanistan earlier this year as part of the ISAF mission to guarantee security in and around Kabul, he volunteered to take part. After five months with the 6th Field Hospital in Afghanistan, Leos Rejmont is now back home in Prague. The Czech-run hospital is to remain up and running till the end of the year, and then a smaller group of Czech doctors will continue to work as part of a 20-strong international medical team. The Czech medical